A Real-Time Flood Alert System for Parking Lots

Abstract

Floods are a constant threat throughout the year to the United Stated and its territories like Puerto Rico. Although there are various methods of alerts available; such as the Emergency Broadcast System or sirens, none of these can alert a user remotely in an efficient and timely manner. The design goal of this project is to provide a real time system able to monitor sudden floods in parking lots, addressing the concern of water damage to vehicles; creating a personal opt-in alert that could reach an end user through their mobile phone. In this case, the system defines two types of nodes: Sensing and Sink. Each sensing node uses a hydrostatic pressure sensor to monitor the water levels; it will then communicate with neighboring nodes via XBee radios until the data reaches the sink node. The sink node is then responsible for sending the received data from the sensors to a remote server via mobile communications network (GSM). An up to date database of users and flood levels will then be processed and handled by the server, which will send users an email alert that will reach any mobile phone as a text message (SMS).

Existing System

Power Utilization Techniques.

Proposed System

This paper presents the implementation of the sensor network for a real-time flood alert system for parking lots. With the use of DigiMesh we were able to implement a mesh network with a synchronized sleep cycle. The ability to sleep gives ample time for the battery to recharge using the nodes solar panel. The DigiMesh network protocol is used to form a peer to peer mesh network for the transfer of sensor data to the sink node. In this case Digimesh was chosen over other XBee compatible protocols like ZigBee due to its ability of allowing routing nodes to be put to sleep. It also has an advange over ZigBee’s star topology in that it treats every node as a routing node, taking away the single point of failure and forming a self-healing mesh. This paper presents the System architecture as well as its functionality taking into consideration the power and transmission constraints.

Architecture

Sensor Node Architecture

Sink Node Architecture

Server actions upon arrival of data